Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1887-07-26
RUNNING A CORNER.
A BUSINESS THAT is GETTING TO BE
EXTRA HAZARDOUS.

The Lesson of Some Recent Operations In
That Line-why the Cornerer Got Into
the Pit He Digged for others-The Tele-
graph Gives the Thing Away to the
other Fellow Every Time.
CHICAGO, July 26-The New York corre-
spondent of The Times telegraphs the follow
ing:
Running corner is harder race than il
used to be- There is the wrecked Fidelity
bank, of Cincinnati, instead Of a successful
wheat corner at Chicago Here is the sus-
pension of the old-time cotton house of Kauff
man & Runge, in place of u profitable squeeze
in August cotton options. Facts like these
help to make clear the increasing difficulty of
engineering successful corner or a specuia-
ton on a great scale in any one of the great
staples. If the attempted wheat corner was
the bungling work of outsiders, the cotton
gambling of Julius Runge, of the Galveston
concern, was the work of man laying claim
to the knowledge and skill of the insider. The
firm of Kaufman & Runge dates back to the
forties, when a stream of high-spIrited, reso-
lutte men went out from Germany to exas-
One of these was the senior Kaufman, now
dead some years From the forties until now
no other trading concern has had more if as
much to do with the industrial development
of that state OF late years the firm has
been giving much attention to reporting the
cotton crop of Texas, and this with unusual
accuracy. The crop reporting work was NJ
Z. Runges particular pride. But he was not
content Early in this year he conceived the
idea of cornering cotton for the August de
livery There was cotton enough for the mill
men of the world, but it promised TO be I'M
evenly distributed The outlook was that an
| unusually large part of the American crop
would lie in Europe by August, and that the
stocks here would be mainly held in New
York aud New Orleans. with the interior
supplies fairly exhausted. The statistics
were all right, but the scheme did not work.
Nhe cause of the failure is worth looking
into, rs it must tell heavily ag ainst all future
would lie corners Rnnge did not take snffi-
Gent account Of the fact that the ocean cable
he was to is at the service of the other
| fellow also The. other fellow is the English
cotton spinner big fruit house went down
| the other day after trying III corner prunes.
| yet in the first year of cable communication a
single New York grocery house made $50
| 900 on prIines alone For the year the house
| had a private cable Things have changed
since No sooner was Runge's buying well
under way than the English Spinners set up q
| concerted cry for short time at the mills and
| at the same tune proceeded to hny cotton
| sparingly. 1hes- SpinIiers have come TO be
| we'll Organized They had advance infor-
nation ON Runge's operations To make bad
worse the incoming reports of the new CROP
| in this country was extremely favorable.
| Again the spinuers were quite as well in
| formed as Ruige The point to all this is that
with the present full communication by rail
and wire the sum of accessible information is
bound to equal If it does not surpass that
held 10y the Ranges. In this way running cor
ners in the great staples must come to be more
| difficult and more disastrous Take the late
wheat speculation. No sooner was the fight
well on than the ia, mers OF the northwest in
effect began operations for the bear side.
| They hurried their stocks to market To gain
| advantage from artificial prices. Thus the
| producer in the American wheat grower and
the manufacturer in the English spinner art
direct operators against artificial price move
ments.
| When to run corners means to race direct
| " with producers, the business OF making W
prices on a great scale must decrease Cor
nering this or that great staple or forestall
| ing the market 1t used TO he called. is sim
| ply advance crop reporting The Armours
| in former years. made more than one fortune
in grain through getting the facts as To crol
| yields in advance Of their reaching the pub
lie This is more difficult if not impossible
now with The general development of gov
ernment and newspaper reporting All sign
| are now pointing to better crop reporting b,
| the newspaper. This important field promises
indeed, to be occupied 10y the journalist 10 tn
| comparative exclusion of the government
As this work becomes organized corner
| will be unheard of things Price fu,,tu
atoms will be comparatively slight. an
profits VIII moro and more accrue 10 tn
producers This Is measurably true already
| The ups and downs of prices have been lessen
ing along with the great volniri-, of Specula
ton The bull aud the ear neutralizs eacl
other Before the telegraph the ui1St Violen
fluctuations took plnc.. In Europe. when
great fall of prices occurred III one city
merchants dispatched the. sNIfte>t cuurI-rs t
other trading centers, each trying TO gail
first entry for tine fact Thing, are nov
| making rapidly for world wide market am
single price list Before quick and easy ',vI
nuniatiuu the differences IL the ptIc', u
wheat comparing one part IT couatry AIt
another very great